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Governor vetoes rail ‘accountability’ stick

With a stroke of his line-veto pen, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Monday killed a budget provision that would have forced the California High-Speed Rail Authority to improve its business plan and strengthen its outreach efforts by Feb. 1 or have about a quarter of its annual budget withheld.

Schwarzenegger’s veto deals a blow to efforts by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, and other state legislators to hold the rail authority accountable after a sequence of audits revealed a myriad of flaws in the agency’s revenue and ridership plans.